As the 2026 National MSME (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise) Roadshow organized by Belize’s Belize Trade and Investment Development Service (BELTRAIDE) reaches its seventh stop in Belize City, the initiative continues its momentum with three additional stops planned before concluding in the capital city of Belmopan.
This first day of the Belize City leg is structured as an intensive bootcamp-style training experience, with segmented hour-long workshops curated to cover high-priority topics for local entrepreneurs: e-commerce expansion, foundational financial literacy, data-driven digital marketing strategy, and core export procedures. Jorge Gentle, manager of the Small Business Development Centre Belize (SBDC) — a technical division of BELTRAIDE — emphasized that the training curriculum was developed to directly address demands voiced by past and current participants.
Gentle explained that the selection of workshop topics is rooted in years of aggregated feedback from MSME owners across the country, paired with analysis of shifting global and local business trends that impact small operators. Beyond core skill-building training, two additional government bodies — the Ministry of Rural Transformation and the Belize Tax Service — have joined the event to deliver guided briefings on business licensing protocols and up-to-date tax compliance requirements for small operations.
On the second day of the Belize City stop, the roadshow will host a dedicated business formalization clinic at the city’s Civic Centre. The clinic will bring together roughly 25 to 30 separate supporting organizations, ranging from BELTRAIDE and the Belize Chamber of Commerce to leading local financial institutions including Atlantic Bank and Belize Bank, all on hand to provide one-on-one guidance to entrepreneurs.
BELTRAIDE Executive Director Ishmael Quiroz noted that the 2026 iteration of the roadshow has placed a greater focus on expanding public-private partnerships than any previous tour, a shift that has contributed to robust turnout across the four already completed stops in Corozal, Orange Walk, San Ignacio and Punta Gorda. To date, nearly 600 individual MSME operators have officially registered to participate in 2026 events, a strong indicator of the demand for targeted small business support across the country.
Quiroz reinforced the central economic role that small and medium enterprises play in Belize, stating, “It’s acknowledged that micro, small and medium enterprises are the backbone of our economy. They create opportunities; they create livelihoods. They also enable the opportunity to transform something that you may have as a hobby into a livelihood, something that’s a craft, but you can make it sustainable and you can have it feed yourself and your family.”
For many returning participants, the roadshow has already delivered tangible, long-term benefits to their operations. Lindbergh Smith, founder of local business Smithy’s Natural Blend, has attended every roadshow since he launched his brand in 2022. Smith credits earlier roadshow sessions with helping him formalize his unregistered home business and expand his distribution network to reach customers across the entire country, adding that professional networking opportunities alone make repeat participation worthwhile.
“When I first participated in these roadshows, it helped tremendously because through the expo, they have exposed Smithy’s to a lot of customers, and that’s how I’ve grown to now distribute nationally,” Smith explained.
Coinciding with the roadshow’s stop in Belize City, the Belize City Council will host its popular Super Sale on the same Saturday, creating additional opportunities for participating small businesses to connect with local consumers.